Group photograph of the event in Kigali, Rwanda.

On June 28 2023, Professor Adrian Gallagher and Dr Helena Hinkkainen presented research findings from their project 'Explaining Non-State Armed Groups Perpetrating Mass Atrocities’ to policymakers and practitioners in in Kigali, Rwanda. The event was organised by Aegis Trust and brough together over twenty policymakers and practitioners from Africa.

Dr Hinkkainen presenting research findings.

The project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and provides the first data collection capturing 12 different types of mass atrocity crimes in 6 countries: Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Syria. The crimes include enslavement, mutilation, imprisonment, torture, rape, forced pregnancy, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, enforced sterilisation, forced abortion, humanitarian attacks and peacekeeping attacks.

Professor Gallagher presenting research findings.

The data collection process consisted of coding staff reading over 1 million news reports and coding over 3000 mass atrocity events in the six countries from 1913 to 2021. As a result, our dataset ‘Correlates of Non- State Mass Atrocities’ (CONMA) sheds unique insights into both state and non-state actors’ perpetration of mass atrocity crimes. This project draws on the data to analyse non-state armed groups’ use of mass atrocity crimes in relation to three themes i) armed group interaction with other actors, such as government forces, peacekeepers and other armed groups, ii) as a tactic compared to other violent tactics, and iii) the extent to which such methods are driven by local geographic and demographic factors.

Professor Gallagher on a panel.

This was the final workshop as part of the ESRC project which followed events in London in May and in New York in June. The findings will be published through a series of articles in the next 12-18 months and the dataset will be made open access thereafter.